Before
by Arhani 'Hanny' Daforcena
Summary: What happened in the Task Force 141, before the full scale wars, and when the Shadow of Zakhaev was just a shadow? A new Captain rises to the challenge, and finds one or two surprises of his own. Soap OC, Prequel to the Red Dragon Redux. Rating may rise.
1. Prologue

Sometimes, life wasn't fair at all.

Nope, life was a bitch that slapped you right in the face and spit on you. Then, she would throw you into the nearest flaming pit and roast you until you were tender on the inside, all juicy and ready to be served to your enemies with gravy on the side. He knew it better than anyone.

Perhaps you would think that he should not be having such thoughts. After all, he is considered by many to be a great hero of the modern times, those that knew anything about him at all anyways. This was because everything that he has done, they were so highly classified that out of the Pentagon and the vestiges of the British Ministry of Defense, not a word were to be said about them. However, that did not mean that the soldiers themselves knew nothing about them.

He could hear them speak behind him, when he was undergoing that "specially tailored" round of officer training when he had returned from the Loyalist infirmaries in Russia, how he had been the only survivor of a gruesome and deadly battle, how he had killed the leader of the Ultranationalists himself with only an M1911. In the eyes of those who had the curse or the privilege to see what he had done, or even know of them, they were what made him strong, and the perfect candidate for this job.

Just a year after that harrowing experience in the Altai mountains, those beautiful mountains which remained green even in the heart of winter, in that land where the cold never ever beat down the spirits of the soldiers that wage war in her name, he had been approached by an American officer of rather high rank… A middle-aged man, old enough to be his father, and yet, young enough to understand that strange spark in his clear blue eyes that portrayed the pain and the strength that a soldier has to bear, no matter what.

"Son, you're the only one that can handle the job we're gonna hand to you," the officer with the graying hair told him. They were in the office of his own superiors, who seemed to know that American. Strange though, the SAS rarely had any dealings with the US Army Rangers, the unit that this man commanded as well. Thus, he looked at the American with a cocked eyebrow, although he did not speak at all.

The silence was so great at that moment, and so was the tension. Freshly declared clear of survivor's guilt, he was fit and ready to enter the field again, but not as the man that he once was. No, "Soap", the FNG was gone, gone with those who had lost their lives in the mountains. The Captain would take his place, and he knew that the old man sought him out for just this reason alone.

"We've seen your performance during the Second Russian Civil War," the American continued, "and frankly, I've never seen a finer soldier like you. You're resilient, highly adaptive, and most of all, you know what it takes to get the job done. With your expertise and talents, there's no doubt that you'll be able to head…"

Oh no, he was not ready to lead anyone. Not at this moment, not at this time. "Sir, with all due respect…"

The old man would not take no for an answer. "You are a Captain, son," the American said. "From now on, you're gonna lead an international task force of elite soldiers. Recruits are gonna come from all across the world, nothing but the best soldiers, and you're gonna be ready to lead them into the field."

And he thought that he was just reentering the field as just another soldier.

It was an opportunity of a lifetime, really. But was he ready to take on the mantle of leadership? Was he ready to even take that responsibility. Oh yes he was. He was ready for anything, thanks to what he had been through. "Yes, sir," he said, sighing. He was screwed, really. He was going to lead a whole company into ruins, and he would be taking the blame this time.

"You won't be alone in this one, kid," the old man added, giving him two more files. "These two are gonna be your Lieutenants." How can there be two XOs in one unit? Was the man crazy, the two of them would tear the unit apart in no time! He knew the other SAS guy from afar, of course, coming from the same faction and all, but the other one…

Let's put it safely that the other Lieutenant was a woman. A woman who had a last name that even he took a look at and gulped. The Algrens were not only famous in America for their ultimately bad-ass prodigious family, where generation after generation served as soldiers, and this one, with a record like that…

"Welcome to the 141," the old man said. "You leave for the main base in Russia tomorrow afternoon."

* * *

HAN: Well, I'll try to focus this ficcie on Soap's point of view, shall I? Still, if you hated the Red Dragon (and the Redux), please STAY AWAY! There's no real point of y'all coming in and tearing it apart using the same arguments!


	2. Meetings

Captain John "Soap" MacTavish

Task Force 141

Task Force 141 Land-base

* * *

Sometimes the world was filled with irony.

You do not need to be the only survivor of an apparent suicide mission to save the world, hence, being made a Captain of an international Task Force of elites only to remember that you were the FNG of said team that saved the world…

Also, the place that you were going to call home, that one place which would house you and your men (as well as one woman, but she wasn't there yet), the "last fortress between Ultranationalist Russia and the rest of the world", was right in Russia itself. Now that was the biggest irony. Their land-base was located in the eastern coastline of Russia, an already almost-forgotten place, covered by mountains and treacherous roads. There was no wonder why the Russians had not discovered it yet.

And so, the world places their hope on the men that would come to that dubiously-placed base, and in turn, the men who came in greater numbers with every passing day places their fate upon the one man that had been lucky to make it out alive…

MacTavish found it rather… interesting indeed.

However, there was still work to do, no matter how unfit he deemed himself, and he knew that this lousy stack of paperwork right before him was certainly a foreshadowing of what was to come. Most of them were the processing forms of the newcomers, which encompassed almost every single personnel in the land-base, him included, and each of the forms were about ten pages long…

* * *

He had forgotten how long he had been there, but what he knew was that the longer he sat in that chair, his rear end would soon explode, and his brain would melt. That was when he heard the sounds of an unfamiliar helicopter, and when he looked out of his office, found that it was some sort of Japanese aircraft, most probably a Kawasaki, carrying, without a doubt, the woman that would serve in the field.

Shepherd told him that she would be entering the base from Japan, and she was already among the latest to arrive in the 141. And boy, did she know how to catch the attention of the boys. From the make of the helicopter, to the flags that the aircraft had borne, there was no need to even wonder who that helicopter carried. The pilot also managed to put in a few rather tight maneuvers, and landed in complete style. A showy act, but it was fitting one indeed. He needed to see something to break from the monotony.

Thus, he put down his pen and walked out of the confines of his "prison", and walked towards the landing area to welcome the "other" Lieutenant of their unit.

Most of the boys were already out to see her, and they were rewarded justly for their attempts, which were to say, she looked exactly like in her photographs: red hair, black eyes, and a face that was not extremely beautiful, but one that made you want to look at again and again. In standard-issue uniform and her hair in a braided bun, there was no doubt her womanly curves could not be seen, but something else caught the attention of the men.

This lieutenant was bearing a Japanese sword.

What the hell was she? A modern-day Samurai or something?

MacTavish nodded towards Ghost, who rushed up to greet her, and was given a warm handshake in return. "How was the flight from Japan?" Ghost asked her, looking rather amused from the tone of his voice. It had been one that was… appreciative, but bore no lust, which would most likely be going through most of the heads of the men by now.

"It was great," she replied, as MacTavish strained to hear, highly enthusiastic, but somehow, her tone of speeach seemed so strange to him, for some reason that he could not place his mind upon. "You must be Simon Riley, I presume?" she asked Ghost, noting the insignias upon his uniform, thus receiving a nod for an answer.

"You can call me Ghost," Ghost replied. "And you're Ryuka Algren."

She chuckled. "It seems that our reputations precede us both then, Ghost," she said. "Please, call me Reddie, it is short for 'Koutatsu' in English."

Being an SAS man, Ghost was exposed to several languages, just as MacTavish was. "So, your official call-sign is Red Dragon then," he told her, and it was her turn to nod. Soon, they were before MacTavish, and Ryuka looked at him, gazing into his blue eyes for quite a moment before she saluted him.

"Lieutenant Ryuka Algren reporting for duty, sir!" she said, her words clearer than the mid-morning air. MacTavish returned the gesture, and they walked into the base together with Ghost. Now, at least the upper hierarchies of the Task Force 141 were complete, with the exception of Shepherd, of course.

"So, you're the famous 'Red Dragon'," he said to her. "You were the one who discovered that nuclear bomb?"

For a moment, she was silent, and turned towards him, and said, "Yes, sir, just as you were the one who killed Imran Zakhaev." Ghost almost hooted out loud in laughter at the look upon MacTavish's face, but judging by the inhumanly quick change of expression on MacTavish's face, decided not to, even if the comeback was not one that he had expected at all. MacTavish must have thought that his exploits with his late teammates were a total secret.

"Do not worry," she added. "My father is with the Marines, he told me all about your mission from a friend." Well, that was plausible, seeing that the Algren family was in almost every unit conceivable in the American Armed Forces. "Your exploits are most inspiring, sir."

For that one moment, MacTavish almost thought that there had been an underlying meaning to her words, but he dismissed it the very moment he volunteered to show her around the base, to which she obliged with a little Japanese bow.

She was to have her own room, not because of her rank, but because there were no amenities for women for obvious reasons. "I thank you, Captain," she told him when the tour ended, having seen the hangar, the medical wing, the various and well-stocked armories, vast training grounds, and of course, top of the line mess hall. She held out her hand, and said, "May we have a great time working with one another."

MacTavish took her hand and shook it. "Same to you, Algren."

"Please, call me Reddie or Ryuka. There may be more Algrens at this rate the unit is expanding."

* * *

The next morning, MacTavish rose early to put in some training of his own in the form of a few rounds on the track, but what he saw was Ryuka, standing in the center of the field with her katana unsheathed, gleaming in the sun's first lights. With him remaining behind her line of sight, she took a deep breath and started to attack an unseen enemy.

Her movements were something that he had never seen before. Of course, many soldiers were trained in more than a few styles of self-defense. Taekwondo, karate, judo, copeira, even Malaysian silat, but still, her style of kenjutsu was as rare as it came by. The attacks were highly violent. He could see that if they were in the age of swords, many would have already fallen to that deadly weapon...

His warrior's eye could see a pattern in her attacks, which consisted of a strike that happened almost immediately after her katana was unsheathed. Such a style would demand not only speed due to the curve of the katana, but also strength so that the attacks could be carried out effectively. He was sure that men would have dominated such a style, and not women. However, he could see where the she lacked in strength, she gained in speed and with her lighter build, she was able to produce highly acrobatic movements that was sure to have left her opponents guessing.

And suddenly she stopped just after she had finished an aerial assault that would have cut a man into half vertically if one was really in front of her. "Captain, I did not realize that you were here as well!" she exclaimed her apologies, sheathing her katana rapidly.

"It's alright, lass," he told her, looking rather amused at her surprise. "You seemed to be in the world of your own."

A smile crossed her features, and she nodded. "My katana reminds me of my family when I am away from them," she replied. "I was taught to use it far earlier than I was taught to use any of the modern weapons we have here… We hang on to our traditions more stubbornly than we support any American war-effort."

"You're all just trying to protect what you love," MacTavish offered.

"Then what is it that brings you here, Captain?" Ryuka asked him. "Is it your family, your country, or something else?"

Those words, they contained a fire that he could not place, but that smile…

He had to be careful. This woman was particularly dangerous, for she was able to spring from anywhere even if she was cornered. "Forgive me, Captain, I have spoken out of line," she offered, sensing that he was not willing to answer her question. "If you would excuse me, I will take my leave."

Ryuka gave him a quick salute, and moved back towards her quarters. "Flighty little missie, ain't she?" Ghost asked MacTavish. Ah, another asshole that liked to pop here and there just when he wished. MacTavish really hoped that Ghost would be the only one who could sneak around unheard and undetected, or he would have to make sure everyone wore tap-dancing shoes on the base.

"Aye," MacTavish replied. "She's a lot different than what I'd expected."

He could have sworn that Ghost raised an eyebrow at him. Even if he could not see the said eyebrow move through the reflective sunglasses that the Lieutenant wore, he could still see the muscles on his face move, indicating the gesture. "You… interested in her, sir?"

MacTavish had a sudden urge to flip his Lieutenant off, but it would be highly unrefined. Wait, what did he care about being refined anyways? He was a soldier for crying out loud! Ghost took the gesture in stride, like all men did, and walked off before the Captain did anything else… drastic.

Oh well, he'd better get back to the paperwork that he had left off since yesterday. Shepherd would be expected in the base any moment now, and he did not want to leave a bad impression on his new commanding officer with a whole stack of tardy papers.

* * *

"You're the Task Force 141, a new elite unit that the NATO armies, and our allies have decided to pull together," Shepherd said to the members of the 141 later in the afternoon. There were only about 30 of them to be actively engaged in the field, a number that was sure to be expanded. "All of you are the best in the world in what you do, and as such, I expect nothing but the best results from you all, am I understood?"

There was a loud chorus of "Yes sir" that followed his words, and Shepherd seemed pleased. He went on to brief them on the rules of the 141, showing that the unit was far different than what they were used to, besides the common features of military life. Apart from Shepherd himself, the Captain and the two Lieutenants, the rest of them were all considered as subordinates regardless of rank, to facilitate a "stronger sense of kinship" between them, and that they would have to undergo frequent and vigorous training sessions, be it physical or technical. However, the most outlandish requirement of all was that they were required to take Russian classes if they were not already fluent in the language, in order to "blend in" with the locals in the area, which inhabited the scattered little towns beneath the mountains they were in.

"But it's the language of the enemy!" one particular Sergeant said out loud, perhaps unknowing that everyone heard him.

"What would cost more then?" Ryuka asked the man. "Your own nationalistic dignity or the possible failure of all our operations once we are discovered by the Ultranationalists?"

The man was immediately silenced, and he apologized for his outburst. With a quick nod from Shepherd, Ryuka sat down again, visibly receiving a glare from the Sergeant.

"Whatever it is," Shepherd continued. "The rules of the 141 are to be followed by all 141 combatants, no exceptions. If there is any proof of you doing anything you're not supposed to, it's the boot for you, no matter who you are."

* * *

HAN: How did you like this chapter? Tell me in a review, and I'm sorry for not updating as quickly as I would like... New Year's festivities and all, hehehhehe ^.^


	3. Ice Breaking

In those modern times, having a woman in the team was not a different experience at all. The Americans were famous for their notions of equality between all creeds, races and genders, even sexual orientation, but the men from the SAS… they were not as open-minded as of yet. The presence of Ryuka Algren in the 141 was more than enough to ruffle a few feathers, but to see her performing just as well as the rest of them… Well, let's just say that their male egos took a slight beating.

However, MacTavish knew that it was to be expected, especially since she was trained to be somewhat of a modern samurai since young. With a fighting style like hers, it was no surprise actually that she had the amount of endurance as much as the men. Well, the rest of them had the benefit of doubt, since they did not know that simple little fact.

And so the founding members of the Task Force 141 began their lives in the world's elite team of soldiers, in the best equipped military base away from the Pentagon with some rounds around the training course in front of Shepherd, who was all pleased with the performance of his "new recruits" so far.

"Alright, that's enough for today," Shepherd told them, carrying a clipboard with a pen with him. "Into the western wing with you. Ice-breaking session, stat."

Ice-breaking… Heh. What you really need to break the ice was not a Lieutenant-General in the mess hall watching his underlings interact with one another, but a few boxes of ice-cold beer, some hard liquor, and there, you have a bonded team, or so MacTavish thought wishfully. But with this team, it would be a little hard, seeing that you had all sorts of different people together.

Something crossed his mind though. The western wing had been off limits to them ever since they got there. So what would be in the western wing that could be used for ice-breaking? Taking his new-found cynicism with him along with the rest of the 141, MacTavish followed Shepherd to the west wing, which was a single structure of about 30 feet long and 80 feet wide. There were a few doors to the west wing, and they were using the one nearest to them.

"Enjoy your surprise, and don't come out until three."

* * *

Those were the only words Shepherd spoke to them before he turned around and left them to open the doors themselves. The men just stared at one another, curious, and confused. What could be in there, they wondered, and Ryuka, being rather impatient of their "male stupidity", which she had summed up with "baka", the Japanese term for "idiot", took charge and turned the knob.

Oh, the halted breaths and loud gasps of wonder when the only female in the team opened the hallowed door. Right before their eyes, were several versions of "heaven" defined in the eyes of men. There were several top of the line television units, along with the separate gaming consoles, along with then other computers just for gaming, all lined against the pristine white walls. In a separate corner, were pinball-machines and arcade games for the nostalgic, a popcorn machine for the hungry, and one that dispensed vast amounts of beer and other soft drinks for those who were thirsty, or just feeling of having a drink.

"Well, what do you know…" MacTavish said, admiring what was before his eyes. Ryuka rolled hers, but of course, none of the men cared about her, an alluring woman, when the greatest toys known to their species were there. And there was just one thing that the young American-Japanese (or was it Japanese-American) Lieutenant could not do, and it was gaming.

Groaning, she was dragged into a world of jumping Italian plumbers, yellow, red-cheeked cretins that sparked with lightning, and of course, constant reminders of their profession, albeit with one or two thousand hordes of zombies.

"How can you survive such brainlessness?" Ryuka asked incredulously at Ozone, who was waiting for his turn on the latest Playstation, another import from Japan, which she was completely inept at operating, much less mastering. Taking the box of the game that Meat and Scarecrow were playing, she almost slapped her forehead out of exasperation upon looking at the title, even if she just saw the word "duty" and a man holding a gun.

Ozone just shrugged at her question. "It's fun!" said one of the boys from the back. "Hey, why don't we get Reddie to play?"

"Go. To. Hell."

"Now, now, lassie, there's no need to get all hostile here," MacTavish said to Ryuka, earning a death-glare similar to the one that he had given her just a few moments ago. But with her black eyes, they seemed more potent and poisonous, to a certain extent of being vicious, one might say.

* * *

So, within 36 hours of knowing her, MacTavish had found a weakness within her, or rather, a very, very clear character flaw. Ryuka needed, no, thrived on being victorious over others, particularly in the fields she chose for herself. And as a result, she hated to lose, and hated for others to know that there were some things in which she was not better than them. And now that it was laid out right in the open, she could not do anything to hide it. He rather liked this tamer version of Ryuka, though. Seething in rage, but because Shepherd had ordered them all to stay in there for four more hours, there was not a thing that she could do about it.

"Here, love," Ghost said, passing her a black-covered book with a chess-piece on the front cover. It was a rather thick novel, and a rather famous one indeed. "Perhaps some vampires would keep you happy until the ice-breaking session is over?" He sounded happier than usual, and perhaps it was due to the fact he was surrounded by the things in life that he once enjoyed, at a time when he was given the time to start afresh?

Ryuka harrumphed, and pulled out another book from the meager book-case. "I prefer my vampires hot and sexy, not shiny," she told Ghost, and walked to the bean-bag near the popcorn machine to read the book.

* * *

Of course, not all games were about cars, shooting Zombies (or anything else for that matter).

All it took was a few beers (Hoegaarden, not that useless Heineken shit), and a few popcorns to bring the half-furious co-Lieutenant of the 141 into the gaming fold again. She was paired with MacTavish on this… contraption that had motion-sensors, so the players could interact with the console ala virtual reality and whatnot. Well, the bottomline was the two of them had to surf a mushroom down a cartoon version of the Amazon River collecting bananas to throw at rampaging giant piranhas.

It appeared to be an easy task, because it needed only excellent hand-eye coordination, which the both of them had. And as the game progressed (they had successfully squashed twenty piranhas and accumualated 20000 points together), Ryuka was going to reach out for a highly elusive banana, and almost could get it, if she had not tripped over a stray potato chip packet lying on the floor.

And if that was not enough, her sudden fall caused MacTavish to do the same, within seconds, the two of them were on the floor at the same time, much to the amusement of their fellow subordinates.

"You alright?" MacTavish asked her, noting her quickly souring expression.

"I am never coming within three feet of this infernal place again," Ryuka threatened before taking a look on her watch. It was 2. 58 p.m., just two minutes before she was able to "be free" from this hellish nightmare, and she was already mentally counting down the time. But it seemed that Lady Luck was not by her side that day, for it was MacTavish's turn to trip (over a beer-can), and this time, he fell, face-forward…

… landing right on top of her.

"Whoa…" exclaimed the rest of the boys during the inevitable moment when their lips touched, and the good Captain immediately received a tight slap on his cheek before she pushed him off her and stormed off at exactly 3.00 p.m.

"Ah, Reddie, did you have fun with the boys?" Shepherd asked her on her way out, oblivious to her apparent fury. Her reply came in the form of a string of curses in what the Lieutenant-General deciphered to be German, French and Japanese. Not particularly appropriate, but he just assumed that it was that time of the month to explain her suddenly violent behavior.

* * *

Ryuka slammed the door the very moment she was in her quarters. By that time, she was no longer furious about the whole personal pride issue that she had, but more about MacTavish and the stunt that he had pulled. She was sure that it was something that he was responsible of, for things just did not happen to pop out randomly so that they would trip over one another in such perfect timing. She was definitely sure of that.

Soon, there was a series of knocks on her door. "Reddie, it's me," said a familiar Scottish voice, and a voice that she did not wish to hear at the moment. "Let me in," he continued, exerting more and more authority in his voice as time passed.

"If you shoot down that door, I will slice you so thinly that your parents would think that you sent them frozen sashimi pieces for dinner," she threatened from the door, leaning against it with all her weight to prevent him from trying to open it.

"It was an accident for crying out loud!" MacTavish explained. "Look, I'm sorry!"

Those words actually managed to soften her up a little, much to his surprise. He heard a few clicks, and the door was soon opened, but Ryuka was no less angry that she was since she left the game-room… er, west wing. "You should be, it was you who incited that fiasco…"

"If I had a chance to make it up to you, what would it be?" MacTavish asked, getting tired of contending with her oh-so female vehemence. If this was going to be like this the whole time during their service in the 141, he was really going to get crazy sooner or later.

"There is nothing to change the fact that all men are ill-humored, conniving…"

And then it happened. He shut her up, by pushing her back into her room, forcing the door shut and placed his hands on either side of her head. Dark eyes of black met cold blue ones, and she tried to move away, but was cornered by him. Before she could do anything else, he closed the distance between them and kissed her.

At first, Ryuka had sought to slap him once again, but something changed… A spark flared throughout her body, and before long, she drew her arms around his neck, pressing her own body against his. She had not felt something like this before, something so sudden, and so… inflamed. His tongue, his taste of beer and cigars enveloped her senses, his stubble against her cheek, the powerful hold of his arms that encircled her waist…

MacTavish was just as surprised by his own actions as she was, and when the kiss broke, he ran a hand down his Mohawk, wondering what to say. "Reddie…"

She said nothing else, but placed a finger upon his lips. "Do not say anything further, Captain," she told him, opening the door. "I suggest that it is best that you left. The boys may start to have stranger ideas in their heads." The decrease of her hostility was not due to the fact the kiss had assuaged her anger, more like it gotten her more a little… winded. MacTavish nodded, and moved out the door. "And oh, this is for the one before this…"

* * *

"So, how did it go?" Meat asked MacTavish, who was now sporting a faint black-eye, courtesy of the Red Dragon.

"You can't tell from the eye?" the Captain demanded from his subordinate, who duly handed him an ice-pack. "Bloody woman punched me!"

Ghost laughed out loud. "Well, take it this way," he said, "She may be a tough killing machine like the each of us, but she's still a girl. Let her be."

MacTavish sighed. "Aye, maybe you're right mate," he uttered, covering the ice-pack over his eye, ignoring the cold sting that it brought, a cold sting that could never compare to the sheer fire and lightning that he had just felt.

* * *

HAN: I hope that you enjoyed this chapter. It was one hell to write! Thanks to Reeserella and ecto1b for their kind reviews! (Virtual Makarov/Soap/Ghost plushies for the both of you!)

And oh yes, do check out the collab-fic I've done with ecto1b. It's titled "Redheads of the 141", featuring Ryuka and ecto1b's OC, Queen! ^.^

Thanks, y'all!


	4. Progress

Lieutenant Ryuka "Red Dragon" Algren

Task Force 141

Caucasus Mountains , Five-Finger Mountain – Azerbaijan

* * *

Three months after their first meetings in the land-base, the Task Force 141 was already on its first mission, having gone through sufficient training in every single scenario possible. These trainings were crucial, not only because they were the first batch of operatives, but because they came from a complicated mix of military backgrounds, and needed to be retrained on Special Operations tactics far beyond what they were used to.

Shepherd was watching them from above a helicopter, and his reports would determine the success of their unit. If they failed, it would be the end of the Task Force 141 as they knew it, and they knew that they could not let it happen.

They had received Intel that there was an Ultranationalist outpost illegally built in Azerbaijan, and the government had been unable to coax them out of their land. Their mission this time was to retrieve whatever they could find in there, and to destroy the outpost.

It was a two-fold mission, whereby Ryuka herself had already infiltrated the outpost in the cover of darkness. Her job was to get all the data that they had into an external hard drive before the rest of the team cut the power out and unleashed hell upon earth.

"I am in," she proclaimed in Russian after locating the resident female Ultranationalist soldier, and taking her uniform as so the blend in with the rest. She was not the only one in the 141 who already had a Special Operations background (so did the Captain, Ghost, and several others), but she was the only one who could fluently converse in Russian at that moment, and hence, the only one able to infiltrate the outpost.

She met two men on her way to the control room, both of whom gave her appreciative looks, even when she kept her head down. The woman she temporarily displaced must have been a live-wire indeed in that secluded little outpost.

"Reddie," it was MacTavish. She could recognize that Scottish accent from anywhere in the world. "You're doing a good job, just keep going to the control room." And no matter how infuriating it was, and no matter how much she would like to have thought herself to be utterly fearless in the field, it brought her comfort, knowing that somebody had her back.

She did not respond to his words, she did not need to. Once in the control room, she took the AK-47 that she was armed with and shot the operators there. Wasting no time at all, she quickly took the external hard-drive and copied everything within it. "We have three minutes, Captain," she reported back, preparing herself to kill anyone who would storm through the doors of the control room.

MacTavish heard her words, and was highly grateful. Perhaps they would not need more than sheer luck to get through this mission any more. Her katana was kept with him, for they could not afford her to lose her cover, and he hoped that they would not be moved to use it in any way possible.

"You heard Reddie," he told the rest of the ten-man team that came with them. "Let's go, boys, we have three minutes to burn this place down to the ground!"

The walls of the outpost were low, and they were made of wood. They had not enough resources there to keep that many Ultranationalist troops at the Azerbaijani borders in structured walls, for they would have to move them out quickly as well. It would be only a matter of time before the United States should have discovered it, or so, the Ultranationalists deemed it to be. The Intel came from their very own eyes and ears, and if they succeeded, the Task Force 141 would have another branch to consider expanding into…

They quickly scaled the walls, near where Ryuka had entered, while some slipped through the open back-door of the warehouse. Some fool must have left it open, and the warehouse was soon cleared of any enemy personnel. It almost seemed too easy, with silenced weapons and with night-vision, but then again, the Ultranationalists outnumbered them three to one. And this outpost was the smallest in the Caucasus Mountains.

"Warehouse cleared," Ozone reported, and MacTavish nodded.

"Reddie, how much time left?" the Captain asked Ryuka after hearing a gunshot from her side.

"One minute, and you can blow this place up," she replied, amusement slightly lacing her voice. 'I know that you boys cannot wait, but you must be patient."

A smile quickly ran through MacTavish's face, but he knew that there were more serious matters at hand. "Cut the chatter, Reddie," he chastised, and the comms were kept clear. At that moment, several guards had come out from the inner areas of the of the outpost, after finding that there had been no response from those at the warehouse, and the back doors.

"Three…"

MacTavish pressed a finger to his lips, signifying that he wanted silence.

"Two…"

The doors to the warehouse opened, the shutter doors that seemed to rise so God-damned slowly that they could have died of anticipation.

"One."

More than just bullets were exchanged at that precious moment when Ryuka disconnected the hard drive after all the files had been transferred. It was the celebration of their first victory in their field. In truth, it was the proof that they could function as one team, and a single unit.

* * *

"Now, now, people," Shepherd said to the thirty men and one woman in the mess hall, celebrating their first successful mission. "I know that you're all happy that this worked out, but this is only your first mission." Most of them were young, almost prodigies in the various armed forces of the world. Ryuka and Ghost were in their early twenties, while MacTavish, only one or two years older than the two of them. They would have much to learn, and much to sacrifice. "You'll have harder, tougher missions to carry out, and if you want to survive them, you'll have to stop being so cocky about it."

His words caught their attention. All eyes rested upon him, and silence caught into the formerly noisy mess hall. "Now that I have your attention… Yes, you've all done a good job, you've shown them that you could do it, bringing all kinds of soldiers together to work as a team. But we're gonna need better results than that for us to continue. I'll give it to you straight: Your results generate our funding, boys and girl, and our funding ensures that we keep the world safe."

In this world where money leads to everything, and everything led to money, there was no doubt that each and every one of them knew what they needed to do, and that what Shepherd said was absolutely right. One small victory amounted to nothing, and every single one of them had handled operations similar to this in their own ways. But with only eleven mobile in the field, five medical officers, five pilots and four drivers, they were a military branch too small to even achieve anything.

The months after this mission would be hard and arduous, as they would begin to receive greater demands of their skills and abilities, but, now was not that time. It was their time to rejoice, and to collect their feelings of doubt that they might have had before, and throw them away to make way for the confidence that will come.

And with that in mind, Ryuka knew that it did not do her any good that she would continue her silent enmity with the Captain. "MacTavish, can I have a word with you?" she asked MacTavish when she found him sitting by himself, smoking. The Scotsman took a look at her, and nodded, ushering her outside. It was cold outside, when they came in, it had been autumn, and now, they were in the early days of winter. Seeing that she was rubbing her hands together, MacTavish took them in his, and breathed upon them. "Arigato… Thank you," she said, and withdrew her hands back into the pockets of her uniform.

MacTavish could see that she was blushing greatly from his gesture, and he knew that he acted without even thinking properly. "So, what is it?" he asked her, clearing the awkward air. The distance between them was dangerously close, and the memory of what had happened three months ago was still fresh in his mind, at the very least.

"I have been ungracious about what happened back then in the game-room," she answered, "I should have carried myself more professionally, and I apologize, Captain." Once again, she bowed to him, in true Japanese fashion. "If we are to work together in the long term, we cannot let this become a bone of contention between us."

MacTavish looked into her dark eyes and nodded. "I think I have to apologize too, for… the… um…"

However, Ryuka stopped him in mid-sentence. All of a sudden, her finger was on his lips, silencing him. "If I had not consented to it, it would not have happened," she told him, returning his gaze... Those eyes, those clear, vivid blue eyes that he had, they electrified her, the more and more she thought about the kiss that they had shared… She held her hand to the side of his cheek, but said nothing further.

He could have sworn that he felt small jolts of electricity where she had touched him. "Reddie…" he murmured, and took that hand in his. At that point of time, his will was no longer his own, and he was… stunned at how such a simple touch could affect him so.

"My name is Ryuka," she whispered to him, her lips almost brushing the skin of his ears.

"John," he replied, in the same manner, and led her away from the mess hall. The rest of the boys would be too drunk to notice that they were gone, any ways. It was an agreement, that futile exchange of names, that they were to use them in moments like this, if any moment like this were to come.

* * *

When they were alone, Ryuka held his face in her hands and pressed her lips to his, bringing to them a repeat of their second kiss, which had haunted them for three months on end. This time, she was the one who held him to the wall, and she was the one who left him bereft of breath when it ended.

"We should stop," she told him, pulling away from him slightly. She knew the dangers of continuing anything with that man. For one, she barely knew him, and secondly, they would jeopardize the entire structure of the 141…

However, MacTavish did not let go of her. On the contrary, he pulled her closer and kissed her jawline. "Do you want to?" he asked her, the golden question that tested her. And she knew that if he spoke to her in such a manner, she would not give a damn about anything at all. "Ryuka…"

"To hell with you," she cursed, scoring her lips on his neck, where she could only reach without going on the tips of her toes, or without him bending down. She was not a woman of tall stature, but he was the utter embodiment of tall, dark and handsome. "To hell with everything else, for that matter…" Another kiss ensued, this time, less fervent, but by no means less passionate, and when it broke, MacTavish kissed her on the forehead, and took her hands in his. "What becomes of us, if we should continue?" she asked him, leaning her head on his chest. She could hear his heartbeat, and it was beating fast.

"I don't know," he told her, nibbling on her earlobe. He needed this, he knew he did. Three months of agonizing waiting and tension… He knew that they were not mere teenagers that they would think that one night of passion would change anything between them, but he also knew that if they were to work together so closely in the future, in situations far more dangerous than the one before, it could change everything between them, and that change could be fatal.

Ryuka caressed his cheek with her thumb, and nodded. "Then so be it…"


	5. Dragon

The Task Force 141 was a success that no one could have ever imagined.

* * *

A year after their first success, they have gone through hundreds more missions, of greater danger and challenge, and they had conquered everything. There was not a month that passed when newcomers shipped to their unit would join the selection processes to be counted among the elite soldiers of the world, but only a handful could successfully stay there.

And in that year that passed, the deeds of the brave warriors of the Task Force 141 spread far and wide, especially in the ranks of the NATO soldiers, where most of them had been recruited from. Everything from the beauty and ruthlessness of their iconic female Lieutenant, to the iconic bravado and inspirational leadership of their Captain, there was not once when a soldier would dream that they would one day be part of such a great unit.

They were the forefront that the world had against the powers that sought to rid the world of peace for their own means. They were the ones that the armies looked to for hope, while the world looked onto their armies for help…

The Task Force 141 had more than achieved what it was set up for, and it was due to none other than the warriors that had fought under its insignia of a skull above the winged sword.

* * *

And yet, there were still things that could never be brought to light. Each of them had their own pasts, and their own stories, stories that no one else could know from one another. MacTavish had suffered greatly in silence for the past two years, knowing that he was probably the only survivor during the joint SAS-Marine mission in the Altai Mountains. He did not tell Ryuka such things, even though they had shared more than their beds and flesh with one another for the past year.

In his nightmares, he saw that day again and again, reliving the past, torturing his very soul. And every time he saw it, he was lucky that Ryuka was not there with him. He did not wish her to see him in such a state, far different from the man that he wanted her to see him as, the man that he wanted to be, but only in the light of day…

Ryuka… He could rely on her, just as he could rely on Ghost and the others, and she was among the best shots that he knew of. If given the chance, she would one day replace him as Captain, and he knew that those days would come soon, if not only because of her youth. And in private, she had become everything to him. She had come to know him as he had come to know her, he had come to learn that her achievements had come from the need to prove herself before others, because she is a woman in the military, and he had come to learn that she placed her family above everything else. He had come to feel for her, more than he could for any other woman, because of all these traits… And he knew that if he would only ask of it, she would be willing to follow him to the ends of the Earth.

* * *

If only he knew much more than that.

* * *

Ryuka Algren was more than just another daughter of the Algren family. She was the daughter of the former Commandant of the Marines, and the current Director of the Japanese Tokushu Sakusen Gun. MacTavish's former Captain, John Price, had been a great friend of her father, back when he was only a Marine officer, and Shepherd a mere Brigadier. These three men had met during the Gulf War, and they had all been like brothers to one another. Since day one of the Task Force 141, she had already known that MacTavish was Price's immediate subordinate, and she knew that he was still alive, and that only MacTavish could lead her to him.

She had tried many times to coax that information out of him, she had tried many times, and she had failed, but not because she did not have the ability to, not when she knew that he had blamed himself for the loss of his unit that day when his infamy had been secured. In the early days of the 141, she had sought to seduce him to tell him all that he knew, but as the days grew long, she knew that she could not do it. Because of what had happened deep in the mountains, he was the Captain that he was today. Strong, capable, respected by all that he commanded, MacTavish was a leader that she was willing to give her life for. She had fallen into a trap that she herself had set, because she dared not force him to remember what pained him.

"Captain…" she said to him one night when they could be alone. Those nights had become less and less frequent, due to the sheer nature of their line of work. He was in her quarters this time, with incense of sandalwood burning. They did not make love, only enjoying one another's company. She meant to speak further, but her tongue was caught when he pressed his lips onto her forehead, his arms wound tight around her.

He was a silent man privately, MacTavish. He had preferred actions over words, while she… MacTavish knew that both her words and actions were on par with one another. "Shh…" he silenced her, kissing her cheek as well. They were going into the heart of Siberia the next morning; they were to destroy a base, a mission much like their first, and to retrieve a high-value prisoner that would tip the scales of the coming conflicts to their favor.

"John, just answer me this," Ryuka insisted, meeting her fiery black eyes with his blue ones that resembled frozen lightning. "If… one day you find me, a far different woman than what you have known me to be, would you still hold me like this?"

That was a strange question indeed. "Reddie, what are you talking about?" he asked her, brushing a lock of her red hair behind her ear. He tipped her chin and kissed her forehead again. "You'll always be… you." Ryuka heard those words, and chuckled, even if she looked troubled. She said nothing more, and leaned her head on his chest, closing her eyes before she fell asleep. MacTavish smiled, and kissed the top of her head before covering her lithe body and his with the blanket, and joined her as well.

* * *

"Papa Dragon, this is Red Dragon," Ryuka said to Shepherd over the comms. "We have secured the package," her voice sounded grave, and Shepherd immediately knew that something was wrong.

"What happened, Reddie?" Shepherd asked, looking at the various computer screens for signs of their progress.

"We lost Cosmo and Moonie," she reported. "The Captain has been shot, and we have two hundred Ultranationalists on our tail. Unless we destroy this base, we cannot make it out to the LZ. Requesting permission to initiate Protocol Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo!"

Protocol Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo was devised by Ghost, Ryuka, MacTavish and Shepherd. In the case they were outnumbered, and outrun, they would blow up whatever place they were in to divert the attentions of the enemy so that they could slip away. It was a double-edged sword, because their own personnel could be harmed as well. But it was a gamble that they must take. The mission was far more important than anyone's lives, and they knew it.

"Permission granted," Shepherd replied.

Ryuka nodded towards Ghost. They had split up the team. MacTavish was with her, supported by Ozone and Chemo (a newcomer, but a seasoned warrior, nonetheless), while Ghost, Meat and a few others were behind them, trying to shake off the Ultranationalists. The prisoner, luckily, was able to walk, and was the former half of the team.

"Got it," Ghost said, "Execute Protocol Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo… C4 detonating now."

Within seconds, the entire base was in flames, and with the flamethrower in their hands, they were able to create a column of fire that separated them from the Ultranationalists, and Ghost quickly led the others out of the base and into the woods where the rest of team were waiting for them.

Their main problem now was to stay hidden until the helicopter could arrive to extract them in the LZ. "My old laboratory is nearby," said the prisoner to Ryuka. "We can take shelter there!"

He had been a Russian defector, a man who used to build weapons for the Ultranationalists. Ryuka did not know if she could trust him. If he could betray such fearsome masters, he could have betrayed even them. "Reddie, go…" MacTavish hissed, and Ryuka looked at him incredulously. "Now!"

Ozone and Chemo carried the Captain to the direction in which the defector had indicated, while Ryuka followed along. The "laboratory" as it seemed, as nothing more than a half-burnt building, but it was still a place where they could tend to the Captain's wounds for the time being. "Chemo, I need something to surpress the wound," Ryuka told the Corporal, and he did as he was told straight away. She turned towards MacTavish and said, "You are a lucky man, MacTavish, the bullet is not deeply embedded at all."

"And you're gonna get it out," MacTavish told her, watching her unsheathe her katana. It was the only thing with a sharp edge. Ozone had already made a fire, and it was highly evident what she would do. "Thanks, Reddie."

She smiled, and placed her hand on his cheek shortly. "Hold still," she told him, and offered him a clean piece of cloth that Chemo had found along with several others. He bit the cloth that she handed to him, and when he nodded to her, she turned him around and started to pry the bullet from his back. His agony wrenched her heart, but she knew that it was necessary. "Tsuyoku naru," she whispered to him. "Be strong, Captain."

There was a huge bang, and footsteps followed, but Ryuka was not afraid. She knew the owners of those footsteps. "Ghost, we're right here!" she shouted towards her companion, and co-Lieutenant. By then, she got the bullet out, and kissed MacTavish on the forehead when no one else was looking.

"How's the Captain?" Ghost asked her, placing a hand on MacTavish, who could only cough when he gave the other man a thumbs up. "Good to know, eh?" And that was followed by the good, old-fashioned middle finger, but it was all just as well, so long the Captain was safe.

But they had to time. "The Russians are getting here," Meat said from the outside of the laboratory. "We're screwed if the chopper doesn't get here!"

"Doctor," Ryuka said to the defector. "How many people could this place hold when it was in full operation?"

The defector took a moment to think, and answered, "Two hundred, I guess?"

And at that moment, Ryuka pulled her rank over the rest of them, seeing as to the Captain was not fit to fight in his condition. "You heard the man, get to the LZ right now with the Captain!" she exclaimed before nodding to Ghost. "I know a way to pin them down, but there is no time. You must all go, now!"

"Reddie…" MacTavish groaned, but she ignored it. Pushing all of them out, Ryuka stood at the backdoor of the laboratory, waiting for the Ultranationalists to catch up with them. With only one cartridge remaining and a grenade, Ryuka knew that there was only one thing she could do. The wooden supports of the roof were already weak, and if she shot it at the precise time, along with the largest branch of the tree above, the roof would fall on the incoming Ultranationalists, while the frag grenade would destroy those that managed to survive the impact.

However, something else caught her eyes. The defector must have thought to defend himself against his former masters, and thus, had a high volume of explosives with him. She could use them to her favor…

* * *

"Ghost, where the hell is Reddie?" Shepherd demanded from the helicopter, after MacTavish was placed safely inside. "She's supposed to be with you guys!"

"Sir, she stayed back to keep the tangos away," Ghost explained.

He was interrupted by a huge explosion, followed by fire and smoke.


	6. Love

"Reddie!" MacTavish shouted when he saw the explosion, and almost succeeded in getting off the helicopter, if Shepherd had not stopped him in time. "Sir, we can't just leave her out there!"

"I'm not going to, son," Shepherd replied. "Chemo, Meat, go back there and get our girl back," he told the two closest to him. MacTavish stared his commanding officer down, knowing that Shepherd would never abandon Ryuka. It was not because he "knew her father" or so to speak, but because Ryuka was one of their best soldiers, and one of their precious few Black Ops specialists. She was too useful to him to be abandoned, and that was why MacTavish obeyed when Shepherd told him to remain there in the helicopter.

* * *

Corp. Henry "Meat" White

Task Force 141

Siberia – Destroyed Ultranationalist Weapons Facility

* * *

The place where Ryuka was last seen was an utter mess. Debris was all over the place, followed by the smell of burning flesh. One grenade could not have done this amount of damage, it did not take a fool to notice that. Something must have happened, and Meat's heart sank more and more the longer it took to find Ryuka.

"Look, over there!" Chemo shouted to him. There it was, a small metal drum. Nitroglycerin, a substance used to increase and intensify the damage done by explosives. There were many, many similar containers, scattered all around the area. No wonder Ryuka was able to make such a big explosion. She must have doused the area with the stuff and detonated her grenade.

Meat sighed. Ryuka could think of ingenious methods of taking down enemies at times, but more often than not, she never thought of the outcome. An explosion like this could have killed her as well, and he knew very, very well that Ryuka did not give a damn about that tiny little detail. "Reddie, where the hell are you?" he asked under his breath, looking around. He could not see anything else but charred wood, a burnt hand or two, and bits and pieces of the building that once stood there.

"Kuso… yaro…" he heard a familiar female voice curse. It was weak, but it was familiar. Not far from him, he saw a mass of green and black, as well as a still-intact M4A1. It was Ryuka's favorite weapon, and she had kept it in pristine condition, used ever since she was in the Japanese TSG…

"Reddie!" Meat cried out, and the heap of green and black moved. It really was Ryuka, cursing in Japanese as she struggled to sit up. He quickly ran to her and helped her to get up, saying, "Boy, am I glad to see you."

Ryuka smiled, and said, "It took you long enough to find me." Meat sighed, and placed her arm around his shoulder while he helped her to stand, while Chemo gathered her gun and her katana. "How is the Captain?"

Meat rolled his eyes. "Reddie, you're probably injured as much as he is," he told her as they trudged towards the helicopter. She tried to chuckle at his words, but only managed to cough. "Easy now, Shepherd and the Captain'll have me killed if anything happens to you."

"Meat…" Ryuka said, shaking his head. "Any single leader in the world's militaries would do whatever they can to save any one of us," she told him, reminding him that they were from the same unit. However, she knew where he was going about. As time passed in the 141, the most noticeable change, apart from their increasing successes was the relationship between MacTavish and Ryuka. They had gone from antagonizing one another constantly to acting as though they were one another's best friend.

Soon, they were joined by Chemo, who said, "Glad you're alright, Reddie," to which Ryuka smiled again. Tired by her injuries and sporting most likely a broken leg, all she wanted to do right now, was to get back to the helicopter, where she knew that worse fates awaited her. "Yeah, they'll never let you hear the end of it," he joked, to which she rolled her eyes.

They came up to the helicopter, where Ghost quickly got down to meet them, as did Shepherd. The general said nothing, but they could see the concern in his eyes, but MacTavish, he was downright oblivious despite keeping his silence. But even if he looked so darned angry, it did not stop Ryuka from getting next to him in the helicopter, and leaning on his shoulder on the ride back as she slept.

Meat looked at them and back at Ghost with a raised eyebrow. "Could've happened anytime, mate," the Englishman said to the American, who wondered if the two of them had known what went on between them both. Most of the team slept along the way, like MacTavish and Ryuka, tired from the taxing two-day long mission.

* * *

"You should have seen it, guys!" Ozone told those of the 141 gathered in Ryuka's room. She had been "sentenced" to three weeks of bed-rest, and had a cast around her broken leg, and the rest of them, knowing her constant need to move about, perhaps even joining missions before the time she was medically ready to. "Two hundred of them bloody Ultranationalists at our tail, and Reddie blows them all up with nitroglycerin and a grenade!"

The woman responsible just shook her head while glancing at Ghost, in the rare times that he was seen without a balaclava. "Alan," she hissed at the man, "Telling the tale once is enough, you do not have to propagate it throughout the whole world!"

"Hey, Ryuka, cut him some slack," Meat said. "It's not every day that you see a katana wielding girl blowing up a whole weapons lab."

"One more word out of you, Henry, and I will make sure that you will endure the same fate as I," she told him, in a mocked fit of anger. Meat only laughed out loud, and took a full swig of the beer that he brought with him. "And I can tell you that it is not an easy feat, running away from an explosion of that magnitude in four seconds."

"Yeah, and you're lucky that you landed on a pile of leaves," Meat said. "Or else, I don't even know if MacTavish'll ever forgive you."

Ryuka, however, disagreed with him. "That asshole is too much of a worrywart…" she said. She did not notice that some of them had gone suddenly silent, due to a rather foreboding presence that was suddenly in their midst. And she, above all people, could not notice who was it, in the jovial mood that they were in.

"Yes, Reddie?" MacTavish asked. Once again, she was met with a gruff Scottish Captain, armed with a raised eyebrow. Perhaps she could defend herself by kicking him square in the face with her cast?

The rest of the boys did not anyone to tell them that this was not a conversation that all of them were welcome in. One by one, they bade goodbye to Ryuka and left the room while giving MacTavish a quick nod. "I… did not know that you were here, Captain," Ryuka said, bowing her head low. "My apologies."

At that point of time, MacTavish did not know what to do with her. Sighing, he gently sat on the side of her bed and asked, "Should I thank you for saving my life or have you court-martialed, for trying to kill my Lieutenant?" He could see that expression on her face, and he knew that she was coming out with a smart retort.

"At least I got us all safely to the LZ," she replied. "Someone has to avenge Cosmo and Moonie. I would not have them die for nothing." In truth, MacTavish knew that it was all an excuse. The two of them had just entered the 141, and were idiots that could not even handle the tight situation. Shepherd wanted them into the field long before they were ready, no matter what he had said on the matter. Their deaths had nothing to do with the Ultranationalists having the upper hand and such. The mission was just poorly manned. Ryuka knew this. She knew that the two FNGs could never survive a mission of that intensity, two days in Siberia in the heart of winter, all to discover a weapons facility, as a well as a base nearby. The two of them could never have done anything for the team at that time.

Her eyes, they were not in line with his own, and MacTavish immediately rectified that. Gently lifting her chin with his finger and thumb, he forced her to look at him. "I almost lost you out there," he told her, looking into those black eyes that were currently cold and unresponsive. "This is not about you wanting to upstage everyone else, Reddie. If you're killed out there, we're all in deep shit."

"And I was only trying to protect you as you did me," Ryuka answered, bringing her hand to where he had been shot. She could feel that beneath his shirt, he was wrapped in layers and layers of bandages. "That bullet should have been mine." If he had not jumped in the direction of the Ultranationalist that could have gotten to her, the bullet could not have hit him. He was lucky that he had been far enough from the shooter, and so the bullet's damage was not as great. "Death is but part and parcel in our line of duty, John, but why would you take such a risk for me?"

MacTavish did not give her a chance to say anything more. He did not even allow her a second to think. Closing his lips with hers, he kissed her, his hands carefully holding her closer to him, while she instinctively wrapped her arms around his neck.

They had shared many kisses before, kisses of fire and passion, sometimes during missions, if they could afford it, but this… this was not like any of them. It was tender, gentle, bereft of the apparent lust that they had for one another. Usually, by now, they would have already started clawing at one another's clothes, ready for a heavy bout of sex, but it was different… She could not sense his desire to bed her, nor could she even place why she was feeling butterflies in her belly for no apparent reason.

"I love you, Ryuka," MacTavish whispered into her ear before kissing the side of her jaw.

"Do not say it, John," she chided him, her eyes starting to well with tears. "You know what will happen if we acknowledge that, you know that if anything between us goes further than it really is, we would jeopardize the mechanics of our unit!" However, MacTavish was relentless. Once again, he kissed her with just as much fervor as the previous time, and once again, Ryuka had to deal with how safe that she had felt when he did just that.

She knew that she was contradicting herself. Ever since that day when they had first made love, she knew that she had willingly agreed to whatever repercussions that it might have led to. They could have stopped it then and there, but the… attraction, the call between them, of flesh and soul had been to… difficult to ignore. She had grown to need him as much as he needed her. And as a matter of fact, they had remained "almost monogamous" to one another…

"John…" she gasped after that particular kiss, allowing him to envelop her in his arms. "I will promise you to tone down my actions in the field, if you would promise me one thing in return…" It was now her turn to rain him with kisses, on his neck, his forehead, his lips…

"What is it, Ryuka?" he asked her, moving his hand up and down her back as he inhaled the sweet scent of her red hair.

"Promise me that nothing will ever change between us," she told him. "That even if the 141 ends, we would still be together, even if it is in secret…"

MacTavish nodded, and kissed her forehead. "I promise," he replied, lacing his fingers with hers before bringing her hand to his lips.

She smiled a most radiant smile that he swore that only he had seen. "Aishiteru," she whispered in return, a word that needed no translation.


	7. Enemy Unmasked

"The Shadow of Zakhaev will bring us one step closer to our vengeance!"

The Shadow of Zakhaev… who was he?

* * *

This man, and she was sure that he was a man, was the man whom Zakhaev had entrusted the Ultranationalist movement to. And from the spies and Intel the CIA had received, this man was the true leader of the Russian Federation, and not Boris Vorshevsky. In fact, she knew that this man was the man who gave Khaled al-Asad access to the nuclear bomb that ravaged the Middle East a few years ago. He was the man that she had joined the Task Force 141 to hunt down, and with every new mission, she knew that she was getting closer to his goal.

MacTavish knew that Shepherd was aware of this elusive figure's existence as well. Ryuka had been serving under the USSOCOM before she went into the 141, under Shepherd and the Commandant of the Marines at the time with her sister. Officially they were the ones who had discovered the site of the nuclear bomb's deployment. Unofficially, they were the ones who were lucky enough to have escaped the tragedy.

From the very first mission, there had been footprints of this Shadow. He was the man who ordered the occupation of Georgia's borders with Russia, he was the man who tortured the Ultranationalist weapons-maker that had tried to defect to the UN. And the Task Force 141 had made this man their top priority. Of course, there was still the famous former-Ultranationalist terrorist, Vladimir Makarov to be considered, but his attacks were so random… so incoherent, that Shepherd decided to make him a secondary target.

This time, they had traced the Shadow of Zakhaev to Pyongyang, while Makarov was on the run after hijacking an explosive-filed subway train in London's Piccadilly Circus, killing 407 people.

"We suspect that he's in nuclear talks with the North Koreans," Shepherd told the Task Force 141, "While Makarov's still hiding in plain sight in the UK."

Ryuka looked at the maps shown on the projector screen, with beeping dots signifying both places where two of these dangerous men were supposed to be lurking. MacTavish knew that she was calculating something, her eyebrow raised as she glanced at the two places, along with the newspaper cutouts of the Piccadilly Circus incident.

"It is a plot…" she said, her voice filled with a sort-of enlightenment. "They could be working together… Makarov and the Shadow of Zakhaev, attacking London to throw our eyes off the talks in Pyongyang…"

All eyes were turned to Ryuka, including Shepherd. "What are you playing at, Lieutenant Algren?" Shepherd asked her, crossing his arms.

"This is only a hypothesis, sir," Ryuka added, "But what if Makarov is not who we really think he is. What if he's just an Ultranationalist scapegoat? In all of our missions concerning the Ultranationalists, we have been chasing Makarov around the world, only to discover that the Shadow has done progress while our backs were turned!"

"Which means, we were fooled for the past three years," Ghost summed up, scratching his chin from under his balaclava. "That doesn't make sense, Reddie. Makarov hates the Ultranationalists! He wants Vorshevsky killed!"

There were some who agreed with Ryuka, and some who went with Ghost, but in the bitter end, it was not of much importance. "Look, all I see here is that we have two situations," MacTavish said. "One is that we'll have to get to Pyongyang, and two, we'll have to sweep London to find Makarov."

"I like the way you're thinking, MacTavish," Shepherd said. "Alright, I'm gonna send two teams of you this time. Reddie, you're gonna go with Roach, Royce and Ozone to Pyongyang to sniff out this Shadow of Zakhaev, and MacTavish, you're taking Ghost, Scarecrow and Grinder to London."

"Yes, sir!" the 141 chorused, and immediately left the briefing room to prepare for their new missions.

* * *

Sgt. Gary "Roach" Sanderson

Task Force 141

General Choi's Mansion (Garden), Pyongyang

* * *

Gary Sanderson, better known as "Roach" was the latest FNG in the Task Force 141. A Marine who had joined after the fiasco in the Middle East, he was selected because he had been highly recommended by his superiors to Shepherd at a time when the 141 needed more snipers.

A young, enthusiastic soul, Roach was the first FNG to be trained by the Captain himself, and was the only surviving FNG of his batch, which came in the previous year, thus, earning his call-sign. Another nickname that he had earned for himself was "kid" because he was the youngest soldier in the 141, being only 22 years of age at the time of entering.

"Sierra Six, we're all in," Royce reported to Ryuka, who was the commanding officer of the mission, the highest ranked among them. Nodding, she raised her katana, which gleamed in the moonlight, and told them to approach the lavish mansion (once a property of Kim Jung-il) by following the shadows of the numerous trees that graced the beautiful garden. Soon, they were directly under the windows of the mansion's foyer, which was around fifteen feet tall, and three-feet wide. Going prone, Ryuka used the reflections on the blade of her katana to check if the coast was clear.

"I want security equipment scans of hallway Alpha Delta," she ordered Ozone, who was currently on the roof, handling a laptop. He would be their eyes and their ears for the mission.

"Copy that, Sierra Six," Ozone replied. "Got it, there two cameras at either end of the hallway. Glass is not bulletproof, over."

At those words, Ryuka signaled Royce and Roach to out what seemed to be security cameras with their silenced ACOG-sight weapons, and used a glass-cutter to cut out a hole for their entrance, while taking two guards out with the same object. "We're in, Ozone. I need directions to where the General is, right now."

"I'll just take a few minutes. Suggest hiding at the kitchen to your left. It's empty for the time being."

Quickly, the three of them wasted no time in getting into the kitchen, filled with the most beautiful cutlery, cookery and state of the art equipment any proud homeowner would love to show the neighbors. "Gee, I wonder if anyone really cooks in here," Roach joked, earning a little snicker from Royce.

"Silence!" Ryuka warned, placing her finger to her lips. "I sense company… Three men are approaching our area."

"You've got that right," Ozone commented. "Better hide, stat!"

Immediately, Roach and Royce concealed themselves in the shadows of the kitchen, while Ryuka took a kitchen knife along with her katana. If they used their guns now, there was no doubt that their presence would be alerted. "Reddie, get back in here!" Meat told her, despite knowing that she was the leader of the mission. She just shook her head, and stepped closer to the opening kitchen door.

The North Korean guards saw her immediately, but the first one was stabbed with the kitchen knife right in the chest before he could do anything. The second had his armed chopped off with the use of her katana, while the third was beheaded. Meat shot the second one dead.

"There, now we can have some bulgogi in peace," Ryuka jeered, wiping off the bloodstain on her katana on the clothes of the guards before sheathing her weapon, returning to her trusty M4A1.

"Sierra Six, I've found two heat signatures in the room directly above you. There's a stairway to the right of your location."

They all ascended the stairs, and picked the lock (courtesy of Royce) and found a woman there, naked. "What are you doing here?" Royce asked the woman in Korean, to which she replied,

"I shall defend my master's plans."

The woman had a remote control in her hands, and pressed one of its buttons. At an instant, alarms went off.

"It's a trap!" Ryuka shouted, shooting the men that came into the room from a hidden entrance. "Split up, I'll meet you at the extraction point in twenty minutes! Go, now!"

Royce and Roach nodded, exiting the room in two different directions.

She herself ran towards the balcony, evading more than just bullets, and jumped towards the branch of a nearby tree. She climbed down the tree, and headed for the garage, after killing some of the men that managed to follow her.

"Now, my friend, we must leave," said a voice, heavily accented, but a voice which spoke in English, nonetheless. Taking out a voice-recorder, Ryuka opened the closest door to her slightly, and caught the glimpse of a man, dressed in the uniform of a North Korean General. "If the West finds the both of us here…"

"There is little risk, my friend," another voice replied. From where she was standing, she could not see the other man's face, but she could tell that it was Russian. Yet, what man had a voice so light? "They are currently following a false trail in London."

* * *

A false trail? In London?

* * *

The North Korean laughed. "Ah, you are always the great deceiver," he praised the Russian. So, Vladimir Makarov was _not_ in London, if so, where was he? "I cannot wait to see the faces of the CIA when they realize the truth of your location."

The Russian then joined in with the general's mirth. "Indeed," he said. "By then, we shall have a greater… hole in the world. A new one, which will poison much of the world's precious resources…"

Ryuka took a risk, and opened the door slightly bigger. She could see the two of them bending down, as if they were signing some sort of agreement. She had to stop it, and the moment after she clicked her recorder to stop the recording, she shot the arm of the North Korean General.

"Go, now!" the Russian warned. "I will hold the intruder off!"

The North Korean quickly left, while the lights of the garage were all turned on, causing Ryuka to dive right to the side of a black car. From where she was, she could see that she was now surrounded by countless beauties of the automobile world. Rolls-Royces, Mercedes Benzes, Porches, Ferraris… The General was rich, and clearly, he flaunted his wealth. One of them, even had solid gold rims.

"Reddie, where the hell are you?" Roach's voice shouted through the comms. "We're freakin' low on ammo here!"

"I am a little tied up here, Roach," she replied. "Give me ten more minutes."

The Russian, however, already heard her. "You will have to come out now, my dear," he said, sweeping every corner he passed. His shadow was getting dangerously close to her, and Ryuka knew that she would have to reveal herself sooner or later. With only sixteen bullets on her person, Ryuka knew that the only weapon she could use was her katana.

Thus, she stood up with her bladed weapon unsheathed. "Ah, it looks like our little kitten has finally decided to show herself," the Russian teased, holding an AK-47. How… stereotypical of him.

"Come over here and we shall see who the real kitten is!" Ryuka threatened. With those words, she broke into a run and jumped as high as she could. Bringing her katana down towards the shoulder of the Russian, she aimed to cut him in half horizontally, rending metal parts instead of flesh and bone. Impossible! No one had ever withstood the Dragon's Hammer before!

In her awe, she could see that man's eyes. They were heterochromic: one was a dark blue, of sapphire hue, and the other was green, reminding her of emeralds, eyes that only managed to place a strange aura of cold death about him. She twisted her katana, embedded in his rifle, causing the weapon to shatter into two pieces, as she sheathed her katana for another attack.

"Interesting," he said. "You are one of the Daughters of the Dragon," he noted, looking at her. "I thought that your line was extinct."

"Well, you obviously thought wrong," she hissed. Once again she attacked, a false strike using the sheath of her katana, but he could see what she had intended to do. He ducked, causing her to miss his lower back, an attack that should have slashed him right there, ending his life then and there.

Taken by surprise, she found herself restrained by him, with her hands held behind her waist, locked by his powerful grasp. "Who are you?" she asked him, poison lacing every word she uttered.

"I can be all that you wish me to be, darling," he told her, running a hand around her neck, tenderly, when she supposed that he would have strangled her. In a moment without thought, he brought his lips to hers, kissing her. Ryuka was immediately alarmed, but closed her eyes when their tongues met.

She did not know how long had passed, but when she could sense from his Ki that his guard had been let down, she elbowed him at the side and grabbed her katana which was lying not far from her. As he was struggling to stand, she slashed him in the knee, and made her escape. A rope was being thrown down towards her from the helicopter that they were deployed from, leaving the Russian to run out of the garage in pain…

"What happened in there?" Royce asked her. "Reddie?"

"We… have been compromised," Ryuka stuttered. "That Russian saw me."

* * *

"Are you positive of this?" Shepherd asked Ryuka the moment her team returned to the Task Force 141 land-base, where she was giving him a debrief of the mission after MacTavish did. "Are you sure that you got a good look at the Shadow of Zakhaev?"

She nodded her head. "He has dark hair and heterochromic eyes," she reported to Shepherd. "But it is a common rarity, sir. Anyone could…"

Shepherd interrupted her by holding up his hand. He slotted a disc into the computer before them. "Look at the screen, sweetheart. MacTavish and his team recovered Makarov's speech which he'd played after the attack."

"You would do well to understand that this will not be the first from me… Revenge is like a ghost, it takes over every man it touches… Its thirst cannot be quenched until the last man has fallen… The world's men of action would look in wonder, how it came to this. You might be able to destroy me… But the beast will eventually come for you…"

Ryuka put a hand to her mouth, covering her shocked gasp. That man, Makarov, who had delivered the speech in London was the man she had seen in Pyongyang.

Vladimir Makarov was the Shadow of Zakhaev.

* * *

HAN: As ecto1b would have put it "DUNN DUNN DUNN" ! How did you like this chapter? Sorry for not updating for so long, I was working on my collab-fic with ecto1b, called the Redheads of the 141, where we mash our OCs together. GO CHECK IT OUT, PLEASE!


	8. Things as They Were Before

"Sir, these are the feeds you wanted," said one of his men. The young man handed to him a bulging brown envelope, and he nodded before opening the envelope to retrieve its contents. They were discs. To be precise, they were discs of video feeds that they had recovered from the various bases that were suddenly destroyed, as well as… other material. It had taken his subordinates almost a full year to recover these videos, and he knew that it would be worth it.

Anatoly, one of his greatest companions and cohorts, however, did not understand what he was trying to do. "What are you trying to do, Makarov?" he asked as he immediately took out the oldest disc he could find and ran it in his computer. There seemed to be nothing out of the ordinary, just normal surveillance videos.

Makarov, on the other hand, was watching the feed so intently that it could be mistaken for some Oscar-worthy epic. "This was retrieved from our Georgian outpost that was destroyed a few years back." Ultranationalist security videos would be streamed to a center-point, no matter where their facilities were, so although the base had been destroyed, he was able to obtain the video feeds from their core supercomputer. The only problem was, with the amount of data they had to go through, it was a highly time-consuming and tedious process. "There was a woman in that outpost," he said, pausing the video to show Anatoly what he had been talking about. "However, ten minutes later… she appears to have lighter hair, while the way she walked had subtly changed…"

"Perhaps she was preoccupied?" Anatoly asked absently. There were many times where Makarov seemed to be picking nothing out of something, and to him, it was one of those times exactly. "Or… it could be the lighting."

Makarov smirked, and shook his head. "Then you had better watch these with me," he told Anatoly. "This one, is from one of our detention centers near the Good Doctor's facility." The Good Doctor had been a nickname the Ultranationalists used for one of their premier weapons designers. The man had defected to the United States, which had sent a team to extract him from his prison cell. They lost 200 soldiers to an explosion where the post mortem had stated the use of nitroglycerin and a grenade upon a breaking building was the cause.

This time, the feeds had audio capabilities. "Captain, I propose we prepare for any eventuality… This place is crawling with enough Ultranationalists to make my skin crawl." There she was again, the same woman from the previous feed.

"And there are still others…" Makarov said when the feed ended. It was most probably destroyed when the C4 those strange soldiers had placed around the detention center. "What this means is that somehow or other, all of our activities are being closely monitored. "Look at this one…" he told Anatoly, whereby the men in one of their St. Petersburg hideouts had been shot down one by one. "The same woman emerges, with that Japanese katana… She dragged Amelin into the basement after rendering him immobile, and from the audio, we can tell that he was tortured in the most inhumane manner."

Still, Anatoly did not understand what was going through Makarov's mind, not that the latter would blame him in any way. "Are you saying that this woman is responsible for all those damages that we've had for the past four years?"

Once again, that devilish expression when he was about to elaborate something emerged. Makarov had been always an excellent orator, and he could prove his talents once again. "Yes, and no, my dear friend," he replied. "While she has been featured actively in many of these operations to destroy us, she is merely one of many…"

And to his utter luck, he met this woman in Pyongyang just recently. Red hair the color of fire, eyes the color of obsidian, and the taste of her lips… He did not know why he would ever bring himself to even kiss the woman that almost successfully killed him, but at that one moment, all he could think of was how he had held her in his arms, and how… right it felt. He would not forget her, even if she had stopped him from walking properly for the past five days.

"Do you know who is she?" Anatoly asked again.

"No, but what I do know, is that she is descended from the Daughters of the Dragons, the Ryujou of Japan. That is to say, her ancestors were the ancestors of the Algren military dynasty in America as well… Her fighting style matches what I've read before, and if I am right, we could be able to destroy the Algrens from the very roots of their linage. And once they are all dead, there will no elites in the American armed forces for an entire generation, giving us the perfect opportunity to strike."

* * *

One family did not amount to anything when there were more than a million other soldiers, but when that family was built so deeply into American military culture, with half of them occupying high seats in the Pentagon, Makarov knew that that family must not be given any chance to thrive.

* * *

"They will pay for this…" Ryuka murmured as she watched the forests of her ancestor's home burn as a result of the fires that the Ultranationalists had caused in defending their makeshift base in the Kyoto Mountains. She had been there with her maternal family for seven days, in a tradition that had lasted throughout their lines for hundreds of years. They were there to meditate, to challenge one another in kenjutsu, to relive their roots as proud and independent daughters of the Samurai…

If it were not for Shepherd's quick thinking regarding the sudden spike of Russian soldiers in Japan, he would not have sent the 141 to escort the daughters of the Algren clan who would be there as well… And if MacTavish and the others had not been there, Ryuka knew that they would have no chance of surviving, armed only with their katana and their wits.

MacTavish drew her into his arms, a gesture already comforting to her. He knew that this had been a blatant attack by the Ultranationalists. There was no possible way to sugarcoat it. They might have succeeded in tearing down the Ultranationalist base and sending those Russians back to where they came from, but the damage had already been down. As the Japanese authorities did everything they could to stop the forest-fire, the mothers, daughters, sisters, aunts and cousins cremated their dead in Shinto traditions. Two of Ryuka's older cousins had been killed: One, a Marine Major, the other, a Japanese Senior Manager in a premier accountancy firm.

"Don't worry, Reddie," he told her after a long silence. "We'll have the chance to get back at them in no time…" However, judging by the expression on her face, he knew that she had other things in mind. "Reddie?"

"I am to blame for all this, John," she said, her voice stoic and cold as she walked a few steps away from him. "I should not have used my katana to attack Makarov in Pyongyang… He could recognize me as one of the Ryujou immediately!"

MacTavish strode forwards, and held her by her shoulders. Looking into those black eyes that were filled with anger, grief and pain, he said, "Ryuka, you did what you had to do in Pyongyang. The mission was a success, and we finally know that the Shadow of Zakhaev is Vladimir Makarov. You did an excellent job. This tragedy has nothing to do with you." He spoke with the authority of a true Captain, reassuring, and commanding at the same time. "I know how hard this is for you, but if Makarov could recognize your ancestry from the moment you engaged him, he must've known about all of you a long time ago."

"Then I shall not stop until he receives what he deserves," Ryuka replied, leaning her head on his shoulder when he embraced her again. The fires had already stopped, and the night was once again calm. After two days of fighting, the desecration of her ancestral home finally ended.

* * *

Her resolve had been made, and there was no way in which anyone could sway her from doing otherwise. In the months to come, Ryuka had participated in every single mission as they got closer and closer to Makarov. And the closer she had come to that villain who had emerged from the ashes of a forgotten age, the closer she was to avenging what he has done to her, the Marines whom she had once served with, and her family.

And in one winter's day in their land-base, MacTavish had called her while she had been training a new batch of FNGs on the finer points of being a sniper. "Shepherd wants to see you," he told her, and she knew that whenever that happened, it was not a simple matter.

Leaving the training to Archer, who had joined their ranks as a designated sniper, Ryuka nodded, and walked towards Shepherd's office with MacTavish. "Did he say what it was about, Captain?" she asked him, but received only a shrug for an answer. She did not contest that response, for she knew that Shepherd was a highly secretive fellow. He would not divulge anything to those he did not see the need to.

"Just be a good girl, alright?" MacTavish joked, leaving her at their commanding officer's door after kissing her forehead for luck. "I'll see you in a few."

She smiled and nodded to MacTavish. She did not need to knock on the polished wooden door. Shepherd did, and ushered her into the office with a florish that she had not seen in years. "Ah, Ryuka, glad that you could drop by," he said to her. He had not called her by her name ever since she had been on loan to the USSOCOM to serve both the Japanese Self Defense Agency and the American Armed Forces at the same time.

"What is it, sir?" she asked, but Shepherd clicked his tongue.

"Ryuka, how long has it been since I stopped being 'Uncle Shep' to ya?" Shepherd asked her in return. Yes, it was true that Shepherd was close to her father, and that they had been almost like brothers to one another. Military formalities had the right of way, uncle-figure or no uncle-figure.

Forcing a smile, Ryuka replied, "Since you became Papa Dragon after Otou-san retired." Her father had been the Commandant of the Marines at one time. But following that horrible nuclear tragedy in the Middle East, Mr. Algren had opted for early retirement. He had been the Commandant only for two years. "Uncle Shep, let us cut to the chase, shall we not? We are wasting one another's time with such… trivialities."

Shepherd smiled in return, the kind of smile that he usually had when a subordinate performed in the manner that he had expected, and he was a man of high expectations. "Alright, Ryuka, you asked for it," he said, and passed her a rather thick folder, filled with the files of about a hundred individuals. "These are the files of Makarov's top men," Shepherd explained. "Each one of them has a specific job to do, and each one of them is highly loyal to Makarov. The most important thing about them is that they work as his henchmen in his terrorist cell, and as highly-ranked Ultranationalists."

"And what would you have me do?" Ryuka asked, quickly leafing through the files one by one.

"Makarov's planning something big, as Intel reckons, but nobody knows what it is," Shepherd said. "I want you to get these people and extract the information we need. I already have the authorization to send you into the field as a Black Ops Specialist, which means that you are to use any_ method necessary_ to complete the job, am I clear?"

Ryuka nodded. "So I get in, torture a hundred people and I get out?" she summarized. "What if Makarov finds out that I am the one responsible for the loss of his people?"

"It doesn't matter," Shepherd replied. "Once you have the Intel, we'll be able to stop him for good."

* * *

As it turned out, MacTavish already knew of the mission that Ryuka was to be assigned with, and he already knew why she would want to participate in such a mission. He also knew that trying to talk her out of it was a rather impossible feat. Hence, he did what he needed to do, and only that.

The very morning when Ryuka was to board the helicopter to the place where Makarov had displaced his men to work on his "big plan" while he was in Moscow to condescend upon the Ultranationalists that were supposedly running Russia, he took her hand in his and kissed it, just before she left. "Good luck, Ryuka," he told her, "When you come back, everything will be as good as it had been before."

At those words, she chuckled, a genuine expression, and nodded her head. "I hope so, John," she said, and turned towards the helicopter after one final kiss.

* * *

HAN: Ah, finally, the end of the fic! ^.^ How did you like it? Cleared enough of things that you may have had questions about? Oh yes, to understand Ryuka's ancestry further, I should interest you in reading my fic: The Ryujou Chronicles: The Daughter of the New Age to give you a basic concept of how her family came about. Of course, she is not necessarily tied to the plot of said older fic, but you'll get a rough idea of it, ahahaha ^.^

Well, thanks for reading and reviewing! I love you all so much!


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